The new variety was selected from a population of seedlings derived from crossing the apple varieties ‘Royal Gala’ (female parent, U.S. Plant Pat. No. 4,121) and ‘Braeburn’ (male parent, not patented). The cross was made in 1985 on trees located on land at Havelock North, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. The new variety was determined to be distinct from the parent varieties ‘Royal Gala’ and ‘Braeburn’, as well as the closely related varieties ‘Scifresh’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 13,888), ‘Scigold’ (not patented) and ‘Sweetie’ (not patented), by the following characteristics:                ‘Royal Gala’: ‘Scilate’ has a later harvest season and firmer flesh.        ‘Braeburn’: ‘Scilate’ has a later harvest season, fruit with a brighter red colour and obvious lenticels.        ‘Scifresh’: ‘Scilate’ has a later harvest season, larger fruit lenticels, and larger fruit size.        ‘Scigold’: ‘Scilate’ has red coloured fruit compared with ‘Scigold’ which is yellow-green.        ‘Sweetie’: ‘Scilate’ has a later harvest season, firmer flesh and a more acid flavour.        
The variety was first asexually propagated at Havelock North, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.
The new variety has been named ‘Scilate’. Asexual propagation by budding shows that the unique combination of characteristics of the variety come true to form and are established and transmitted through succeeding propagation. In order to obtain true-to-type clones of the initial plant, asexually propagated plants were obtained by budding dormant buds from the original seedling onto MM106 rootstocks.